Review by Frank

 

Horror and comedy go together like Purell hand sanitizer and a night at the strip club. That is to say they are a wonderful and wise combination. It's a combo that's spawned a varied array of horr-com subgenres, like the seemingly bottomless zomedy subgenre and the smaller slasher spoof subgenre (à la Hatchet and Club Dread). Despite the fact that relatively few slasher spoofs exist, the subgenre blazed a new horror comedy trail back in 2000, when Scary Movie grossed $42 million domestically on its opening weekend. But a little movie called Student Bodies mastered the slapstick slasher over a decade before big-budget Hollywood or underground indie makers caught on, and it did one of the best jobs ever at delivering laughs and horror elements inside of one movie.

 

Somehow I got through an 80s childhood having never rented this movie nor watched it on "USA Up All Night," despite the fact that I vividly remember the VHS cover and poster, which was from the golden age of cool 80s horror poster art.

 

So when my first viewing occured recently, I was skeptical, figuring that it would only be fun to laugh at, but probably not with. To my happy surprise, Student Bodies turned out to be a nearly perfect take on the slasher/giallo formula shaken with the goofball comedy of Airplane! From the first scene forward, one wonders why this hasn't hit the same retail DVD shelves that are cluttered with shit like Critters 4.

 

The simple plot unfolds as a whodunit about an elusive serial killer called "The Breather" who is hacking up the students and staff at a Houston high school. Is the killer cute but overdressed protagonist Toby? Is it her creepball shrink Dr. Sigmund? Pseudo-retarded janitor Malvert? Mr. Peters, the pedo principle?

 

Or was it one of the other hilariously, douchechill-inducing characters that populate the movie? Do we care? Sure, I guess, as long as means another humorous set piece.

 

One by one, the suspects are snuffed out in a series of humorous deaths scenes that are interspersed with wacky character bits and non-sequitur comedy. If you imagine Clue for horror fans, then you're still off by about a bag of 'shrooms.

 

Low-budget 80s comedies often suffered in the casting department, but this one sports a damn adequite group of no-name actors. Supposedly it was shot in Houston in order to avoid certain union laws during an early 80s writer's strike. But the casting director was still able to wrangle a ragtag cast who deliver on the deft script.

 

A it's a good sript indeed. It was written and directed by a guy who wrote for a slew of mediocre 60s, 70s, and 80s television shows and also co-wrote the Woody Allen movie Bananas. But he can forgiven in light of this movie.

 

Among the best cast memebers (topping them all) is Malvert the idiot janitor, a man who must have been hand picked by the comedy gods. His physical mannerisms are something that would have been sorely wasted in any genre but comedy; what with his lanky frame that makes Joey Ramone look like a Danny Devito, a face that only Robert Crumb's mother could love, and his horrible attempts at retard-speak that are funny for reasons I'm still not sure were intentional.

 

 

Malvert was played by a man called The Stick, a comedian who much like Prince was named with one word that aptly described his appearance. Unfortunately his film career was short, and he long ago disappeared back into civilian life. After I researched this film, it became apparent the fact that his email address and phone number are not somehow accessible to the public seems to cause great dismay among some disturbed superfans/stalkers who frequent the oft-horrible IMDb message boards. The Stick, I would stay in seclusion if I were you.

 

Joe Flood delivers another standout performance as Mr. Dumpkin, the bookend-obsessed shop teacher. He's got the same perverted undertones of most of the school staff, although his fetish for building horsehead-shaped bookends is so random and innocuous that he almost seems the sickest (and most hilarious) of them all.

 

Eventually we find out who the killer is, but I won't spoil the fun. Everything culminates in a surreal final sequence that I won't spoil except to say that the old women in the travelling trashcan can be a strangely hilarious thing.

 

Student Bodies was ahead of its time as a goofball horror movie, but in addition to this historical significance, it'a a really fun killer of 85 minutes in the 2000's. No nudity and not much blood, but there's a number of hearty laughs. There's a bit of idiocy to wade through (see: rubber chicken phone call), but it's completely made up for by the incest jokes.

 

My advice? Hurry up and go order a VHS copy of this classic film before the owner of that credit card that you "found" at the mall calls in a cancellation…

 

 

Rating: 4/5 Horsehead Bookends

 

Good in a Good way

 

 

 

If you want to bother the company responsible for not releasing this on DVD, contact Paramount Pictures via snail mail (they take it more seriously than e-mail) and successfully convince them that you will buy 10 copies the day it comes out.